CBO crumbles under health workload

The Democrats’ push to get health care reform passed through Congress is putting incredible strain on staff in the Congressional Budget Office — a stressor that may have contributed to the recent incorrect scoring of a draft House provision.

CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told House Appropriations Legislative subcommittee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) that his staff has been working “100-hour weeks” and cannot keep up with the budgetary and economic impact queries lawmakers have about health care.

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“Analysis of competing health care proposals absorbed a huge share of the agency’s resources, and CBO analysts in that area have worked flat out for more than a year,” Elmendorf said today. “…Considerable congressional interest in analysis of health care issues is likely to persist and …the almost round-the-clock schedule maintained this past year by CBO’s current staff cannot be maintained much longer.”

The CBO is under immense pressure from Congress to release the cost estimate of the reconciliation bill for the House legislation. Some lawmakers expect a vote over the weekend.

The budget office is responsible for providing Congress nonpartisan analysis and cost estimates for legislation, but the CBO has been in the limelight in a much greater way as Democrats desperately try to keep the cost of the health care bill in check.

But the CBO admits that the quantity of analysis hasn’t been enough to meet the needs of Congress.

Wasserman Schultz said she was concerned that Elemendorf’s office had recently sent a scored legislative summary to a House office that later needed to be significantly amended.

Wasserman Schultz’s aides wouldn’t specify where the error occurred, but one aide said that the cost estimate differences were “significant.”

“Can we be sure in the future that’s not going to happen again?” Wasserman Schultz asked Elmendorf, noting that factual errors are a “big concern. This was a dramatic change…That, to me, should be avoided at all costs.”

“I wish I could guarantee that,” Elmendorf said.

“The committee was simply frustrated because they thought that the number provided was a final number, when really it was a preliminary number and that was not adequately conveyed to the committee. The chair’s question was merely a way to communicate the need for better delineation of final vs. preliminary numbers,” Wasserman Schultz spokesman Jonathan Beeton said in a statement after the hearing.

Elmendorf said the error might have been partially due to a miscommunication between a House aide who received the information, which he said was only an initial projection on the complicated legislative issue.

Congress granted the CBO a supplemental $2 million appropriation in fiscal 2009 to beef up the office’s health care team and other staffing needs.

But in its FY 2011 budget proposal, Elmendorf said he is still looking for funds to add an additional four employees, bringing their number to 258.